Compiling for Android in Visual Studio

[mikhailitsky]

Is it possible to compile the Android version of a project and run it in the emulator right in Visual Studio? I remember it was possible to do with Cocos2dx.

[aismann]

Is it possible to compile the Android version of a project and run it in the emulator right in Visual Studio? I remember it was possible to do with Cocos2dx.

I never using Visual Studio compiling the Android version.

Here are the official documentation:
https://github.com/axmolengine/axmol/blob/dev/docs/DevSetup.md#%EF%B8%8F-ide-integration

[mikhailitsky]

I know about that, but I was asking about a different thing. Here is a screenshot from my Visual Studio 2017 with a Cocos2dx project open in it. There is an option to choose an ARM target, compile the Android version of the project right there in Visual Studio and launch it in the emulator right there. I'm looking for something like that in Visual Studio 2026 + Axmol:

[arprixar]

I tried to work with Android in Visual Studio when Android Studio was still underdeveloped, but I quickly abandoned this idea. I understand that you are probably motivated by the Visual Studio IDE that you are used to and the desire to have everything in one place. But my experience shows that you will waste more time trying to squeeze it out of VS than you will spend learning Android Studio. Everything is working fine in Android Studio right now.

[mikhailitsky]

I didn't have any issues compiling Cocos projects in VS 2017, not sure what waste of time you are referring to. I could also live with the sluggishness of Android Studio using it for the final build while doing most of the work in VS. But how the painfully slow Android Studio's emulator can be any useful is beyond me. Microsoft's emulator was/is blazing fast and it is the main reason I'd like to use VS.

[aismann]

@mikhailitsky
Please close it when the answer is ok for you.
Thx.